Дэвид Балдаччи - Wish You Well

At that moment, the hated mine siren boomed across the valley. It was as though the mountain were shrieking in anticipation of the coming pain. The sound seemed to splinter Lou’s very soul. And next the rumble of the dynamite came and finished her off. Lou looked to that Cardinal graveyard knoll and suddenly wished she was there too, where nothing else could ever hurt her.

She bent over and wept quietly into her lap. She hadn’t been there long when she heard the door creak open behind her. At first she thought it might be Eugene checking on her, but the tread was too light. The arms wrapped around her and held her tight.

Lou could feel her brother’s delicate breaths on her neck. She stayed bent over, yet she reached behind her and wrapped an arm around him. And brother and sister stayed there like that for the longest time.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

They rode the wagon down to McKenzie’s Mercantile, and Eugene, Lou, and Oz went inside. Rollie McKenzie stood behind a waist-high counter of warped maple. He was a little ball of a man, with a shiny, hairless head and a long grayish white beard that rested on his slack chest. He wore spectacles of great strength, yet the man still had to squint to see. The store was filled to nearly overflowing with farm supplies and building materials of various kinds. The smell of leather harnesses, kerosene oil, and burning wood from the corner potbelly filled the large space. There were glass candy dispensers and a Chero Cola box against one wall. A few other customers were in the place and they all stopped and gaped at Eugene and the children as though they were apparitions come haunting.

McKenzie squinted and nodded at Eugene, his fingers picking at his thick beard, like a squirrel worrying a nut.

“Hi, Mr. McKenzie,” said Lou. She had been here several times now and found the man gruff but fair.

Oz had his baseball mitts draped around his neck and was tossing his ball. He was never without them now, and Lou suspected her brother even slept with the things.

“Real sorry to hear ’bout Louisa,” McKenzie said.

“She’s going to be fine,” said Lou firmly, and Oz gave her a surprised look and almost dropped his baseball.

“What can I do for you?” asked McKenzie.

“Got to raise us a new barn,” said Eugene. “Got to have us some things.”

“Somebody burned our barn down,” said Lou, and she glared around at the people staring.

“Use some finished board, posts, nails, hardware for the doors, and such,” said Eugene. “Got me a good list right chere.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and laid it on the counter. McKenzie did not look at it.

“I’ll need cash up front,” he said, finally letting his beard alone.

Eugene stared at the man. “But we good on our ’count. All paid up, suh.”

Now McKenzie eyed the paper. “Lot of stuff on that list. Can’t carry you for that much.”

“So’s we bring you crop. Barter.”

“No. Cash.”

“Why can’t we get credit?” asked Lou.

“Hard times,” replied McKenzie.

Lou looked around at the piles of supplies and goods everywhere. “Times look pretty good to me.”

McKenzie slid back the list. “I’m sorry.”

“But we’s got to have a barn,” said Eugene. “Winter come fast and we ain’t keep the animals out. They die.”

“The animals we have left, ” said Lou, glaring some more at the still staring faces.

A man equal in size to Eugene approached from the rear of the store. Lou knew him to be McKenzie’s son-in-law, who was no doubt looking forward, she figured, to inheriting this good business one day when McKenzie squinted his last.

“Look here, Hell No,” said the man, “you got your answer, boy.”

Before Lou could say a word, Eugene stepped directly in front of the man. “You knowed that ain’t never been my name. It be Eugene Randall. And don’t you never call me nuthin’ else.” The big man appeared stunned, and he took a step back. Lou and Oz exchanged glances and then looked proudly upon their friend.

Eugene stared down each of the customers in the store, ostensibly, Lou thought, to make clear that this statement applied to all of them as well.

Rollie McKenzie called out, “I’m sorry for that, Eugene. It won’t never happen again.”

Eugene nodded at McKenzie and then told the children to come on. They went outside and climbed on the wagon. Lou was shaking with anger. “It’s that gas company. They’ve scared everybody. Turned people against us.”

Eugene took up the reins. “It be all right. We think’a somethin’.”

Oz cried out, “Eugene, wait a minute.” He jumped down from the wagon and ran back inside.

“Mr. McKenzie? Mr. McKenzie?” Oz called out, and the old man came back to the counter, blinking and picking at his beard.

Oz plopped his mitts and ball on the curled maple planks. “Will this buy us a barn?”

McKenzie stared at the child, and the old man’s lips trembled some, and his blinking eyes grew moist through the heft of glass. “You go on home, boy. You go on home now.”

They cleared all the debris from the remains of the barn and collected all the nails, bolts, and usable wood that they could from the ruins. Cotton, Eugene, and the children stood and stared at the meager pile.

“Not much there,” said Cotton.

Eugene looked at the surrounding forests. “Well, we got us lot of wood, and it all free, ’cept the sweat of felling it.”

Lou pointed to the abandoned shack her father had written about. “And we can use stuff from there,” she said, then looked at Cotton and smiled. They had not spoken since Lou’s outburst, and she was feeling badly about it. “Maybe make us a miracle,” she added.

“Well, let’s get to work,” said Cotton.

They tore down the shack and salvaged what they could. Over the next several days they cut down trees with an ax and a crosscut saw that had been in the corncrib and thus had escaped the fire. They pulled out the felled trees with the mules and chains. Fortunately, Eugene was a first-rate, if self-taught, carpenter. They topped off the trees and stripped the bark, and using a square and a measuring tape, Eugene cut marks in the wood showing where notches needed to be chiseled. “Ain’t got ’nough nails, so’s we got to make do. Notch and strap the joints best we can, mud chink ’tween. When we get mo’ nails, we do the job right.”

“What about the corner posts?” asked Cotton. “We don’t have any mortar to set them in.”

“Ain’t got to. Dig the holes deep, way below the cold line, crack up the rock, pack it in good and hard. It hold. I give us some extra hep at the corners with the braces. You see.”

“You’re the boss,” said Cotton with an encouraging smile.

Using a pick and shovel, Cotton and Eugene dug one hole. It was tough going against the hard ground. Their cold breath filled the air, and their gloved hands ached with the raw. While they were doing this, Oz and Lou chiseled out and hand-drilled the notches and insertion holes on the posts where timber mortise would meet timber tenon. Then they mule-dragged one of the posts to the hole and realized they had no way to get it in there. Try as they might, from every angle, and with every conceivable leverage, and with big Eugene straining every muscle he had, and little Oz too, they could not lift it enough. “We figger that out later,” said Eugene finally, his big chest heaving from the failed effort.

He and Cotton laid out the first wall on the ground and started to hammer. Halfway through they ran out of nails. They collected all the scrap metal they could find and Eugene made a roaring coal fire for his forge. Then, using his smithy hammer, tongs, and shoeing anvil, he fashioned as many rough nails from the scrap as he could.